In which the pond sets no precedents with Dame Slap and nattering "Ned" ...

 

The pond sat transfixed as Sky News dropped regular reports on the quest for a record. 

Things haven't been going well for plucky England of late, what with a dud liar as a PM, a gaggle of replacement coves of the low rent kind in contention, Brexit a flop, the economy in dire straits, and so on and troubled Crace forth ... 

The least they could do was score a record, and lo and behold ...

As the pond's correspondents have noted, it goes without saying that it is a precedented unprecedented record. At last plucky England has set a record! Well played lads and lasses ...

... though it goes without saying, we must remember the precedents.

It might not be the record you think it is.

Go back a bit further than the 350 years of climate record keeping, and you'll surely find a warmer planet. 

Heck, as Ussher firmly established, when the long absent lord established the place in 4004BC, he was surely working with a lot of hot rock, and the pond expects this evidence to turn up in the dog botherer's next treatise on unprecedented precedents for the unprecedented ...

Forget a minor current record, think of the temperature inside a volcano. Now there's some genuine heat.

As this is the pond's penultimate post for a short while - there will be a celebratory post let loose to explain why - the pond is inclined to indulge in a deviation from the norm. 

Yes, in due course, there will be the usual Dame Slap, and a relatively brief nattering "Ned" of Kelly fame, but first please allow the pond to take a trip back in time, back to the days when Dame Slap was infatuated with that Peterson chappie ...

If you can break the lizard Oz paywall - the pond encourages everyone to get the goodies for free - you will find columns of this kind ...

We never hear Dame Slap on Peterson these days, but as when she donned the MAGA cap and strode out into the night, she fell hard and she fell early. She just loves authoritarian patriarchs with a mean fascist streak, and so back in 2018 there was this...

The pond didn't bother with the six reasons at the time. The pond thought he was an attention-seeking, deeply narcissist flake and a fake, and his subsequent personal life cavortings and carry-ons confirmed it, but that's exactly the sort of personality Dame Slap loves ...

Why delve into this ancient history? 

Well of late the rogue caught the eye of Cathy Young in The Bulwark under the header Jordan Peterson's Pro-Putin punditry, and that caught the pond's eye, and the pond immediately thought of Dame Slap and her infatuation.

The whole piece is worth a read, but please allow the pond to come in late ...

Where to begin?

The notion that the West’s moral standing vis-à-vis Russia in 2022 is undercut by some uniquely terrible moral “degeneracy” and irrationality does not pass the laugh test. For instance, as David French points out, for a good part of the Cold War the United States tolerated not only racial segregation but the often-violent oppression and disenfranchisement of black Americans in the Southern states. I daresay this was in drastic contradiction with the principles of freedom and democracy we were upholding in opposition to Soviet Communism. Does Peterson really think that putting Justice Jackson on the Supreme Court after a selection process limited to black women is more reprehensible than excluding blacks (and, in many cases, women) from a wide range of high-level public positions?

(Incidentally, Putin has also invoked the history of racial injustice in the United States as proof of American hypocrisy on human rights, continuing the Soviet-era tradition of such whataboutism. Authoritarians will weaponize whatever they can!)

One could also point out that Putin’s obsession with keeping Ukraine out the West’s clutches goes back to circa 2004—which is to say, it started about a decade before what liberal pundit Matt Yglesias dubbed “the Great Awokening”: the shift to the new progressive focus and framework on race, gender, and other identities.

What’s more, if we want to talk about contradiction and non-contradiction, Peterson’s own plea for Western civilizational renewal—and his claim that such a renewal will ensure a more friendly disposition from the Russian political establishment—is profoundly incoherent. He asserts, for instance, that the “radical ideas” he finds so corrosive must be defeated not only by adherents of traditional religious values but by “classic liberals [and] small-c conservatives” defending the heritage of the Enlightenment. But he also argues that Russia sees itself as championing a religiously ordered society built on Russian Orthodox values; he even cites Dostoyevsky’s A Writer’s Diary, a collection of political newsletters, as an expression of this philosophy. Leaving aside the repellent passages on “the Jewish Question” in that work, there is no doubt whatsoever that Dostoyevsky loathed and feared “degenerate” Western influence at a time when Western liberalism was about 150 years away from going “woke.”

As the cherry on top, Peterson mentions the neofascist crank Aleksandr Dugin as a “genuine philosopher” whose influence on Putin supposedly shows the Russian leader’s authentic interest in “philosophical and theological” matters. (Peterson had previously discussed Dugin’s alleged status as Putin’s adviser, and his hostility to Western liberalism as a driver of “materialistic hyper-individuality,” in a 2015 lecture.) I’m not even sure what’s more important to point out here: that Dugin’s “philosophy” is virulently hostile to even to the least “woke” varieties of Western liberalism, or that Dugin is either a kooky, occultism-obsessed prophet of Russian imperialism or a mega-troll whose public persona is a kind of performance art. (Of course, in truly postmodern fashion, it is possible that he is some combination of both.) The bottom line is that if you take Dugin seriously as a “philosopher,” you’ve well and truly jumped the shark.

And after jumping the shark, and possibly nuking the fridge, or better still, the planet, there was this ...

The reality is that, for all the West’s culture-war problems, the defense of Ukraine is both the most genuinely liberal cause (in the classic sense of the word) and the most genuinely moral cause that exists in our public and political space right now. And, be it reflexive contrarianism, pandering to his fan base, or genuine conviction, Peterson now finds himself on the wrong side of that cause—which arguably reduces all his talk of defending of Western civilization and upholding strict moral standards of good and evil to, yes, “shallow posturing.” The worrying question, given his large fan base and his status as a conservative celebrity, is how many people will follow him there. 

Will Dame Slap follow her idol there? Just a passing thought ...

Of course Dame Slap never revisits her vomit. Never say you were wrong, never express regret, just plough on, while others remember the MAGA cap-wearing devotion to the mango Mussolini, or to the Putin-loving Peterson ...

And now, with a flourish, to today's fresh Dame Slap vomit ...

As always, the devil is in the detail, which is to say meaningless speculation about a body not yet passed, and used as an excuse for the usual Labor and union bashing.

Meanwhile, plucky Britain, don't think you're the only one to set records. 

As the pond listens to the sound of rain on tin roof while typing this, soggy, sodden Sydney is also setting unprecedented precedental records ...

1858? That's nothing. Go back to the days of Noah and his ark and a genocidal god exterminating the entire planet, and then you might talk of records ... those were the days when things got a little damp, and the dog botherer is sure to mention the unprecedented precedents in his next column ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, far from Dame Slap's abode above the faraway tree, the infallible Pope was mentioning the unmentionable, that report, which is a bit like all those precedented unprecedentals ...

But enough of going there, it's too much for the hollow reptiles to bear ...

So it's back to more of the usual Dame Slap ... with the pond ashamed that the infallible Pope had dared to attempt to draw the reptiles' attention away from their usual sport of union and Labor bashing...

Ah the old beggaring of beliefs and "imagine if" ... can the pond sing along ...

Imagine there's no Jordan Peterson

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people

Livin' for today

Ah

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing for Vlad the impaler to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Livin' life in unprecedented peace

You

You may say I'm a dog bothering dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no climate records

Imagine no reptile climate science denialism

I wonder if you can

No need for extreme heat or extreme rain 

A sisterhood of persons ...

Dammit, the pond doesn't know what happened to those bloody lyrics, but at least it meant the swallowing of the last Dame Slap gobbet came a little easier ...

Indeed, indeed, and yet the federal integrity commission delivered by Dame Slap's mob is an astonishing sight to behold ... the pond imagines it every day, and imagines it's a bit like beholding Jordan Peterson putting in for Putin.

The pond really must cut back on its irony intake, and so on to nattering "Ned", and the pond can hear a few feeble dissenters squeaking "must we go there?"

But what choice did the pond have?

Look, there's Oliver beating up on the Kiwis, as the reptiles are wont to do. Isn't it enough that Ireland recently beat up the Kiwis? If NZ is a disaster, remind the pond to go live in Sri Lanka ...

And there's the lizard Oz editorialist doing a Covid Bogart impression - you're on your own kid, and don't come whining to the reptiles if you cop a dose ...

No, for the pond's penultimate outing (albeit for a short time), it had to finish off with nattering "Ned", because that would surely finish the pond off ...

A new realism? Dear sweet long absent lord, what a ponderous, pontificating, portentous, pompous relic he is, what an arcane dinosaur, with a tedious tun of phrase, and the usual bees buzzing in the old right-wing noggin ...with the noise from those infected bees drowning out any chance that "Ned" might mention climate science or sundry other matters.

And then to add insult to injury, there came the usual reminder - not of nattering "Ned" reading his own words in dulcet tones - but that you had to go online to get "Ned's" wisdom in full and never mind that the pond hasn't touched a tree killer edition since freebie at the airport days, long gone ...

Yes, a measly $750 bucks, for those trapped in the casual and gig economies, and the reptiles were in a faux uproar that was only matched by Sussan Ley's disingenuous hypocrisy ...

Just remember, you're on your own kiddo ...

Here's an action for you. Caught a dose? Short of a quid? Go directly to work and infect all your colleagues. It's the only sensible thing to do, it's reptile thinking at its finest, it's the individual in action, and it will turn the economy into a powerhouse ...

The pond really must stop its hunger for breakfast cereals with a full range of vitamins and irony ... but then came the good news, only a gobbet of "Ned" to go before the pond might turn to the immortal Rowe for a closer ...

Now back to "Ned", fucking compassion as only a precedented reptile can do ...

Yes, speak only of national advancement, and remember the reptile way. 

Do not mention climate science, do not speak of records, heck, do not speak of Jordan Peterson, and certainly do not mention that report that was hidden from the world ... and now only turns up in the pond when there's a cartoonist to hand  to capture the ferals in the wild, ruining the habitat..

As always, that left the pond in a quandary ... so many favourites to pick from ...

That bit of beefy pure Angus boofhead tempted the pond mightily.

But being a Tamworth person with a fine eye for bulls and a keen ear for bullshit, the pond liked the sullen expression in this one, and even better the wild eye in this steer. 

Now there's a nasty sort, watch out, never turn your back while up in the back paddock, or you might be a goner ...